But What *Is* A Diablo III, Anyway?

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I’ve simply got no idea. Do you know? Or you, Steve? Perhaps I’ll ask John. “I’ve no answer for you,” says John. “It should remain a mystery, like magnets.” See, no one actually knows. It’s convenient then, that Blizzard should have put out an “introduction to Diablo III” video (via VG247) for me to post below. That explains it. That explains it right up.

Related news: Diablo III will be playable – via mandatory internet! – tonight from midnight Imperial London time. So that might answer some more questions.

Come on then, let’s have it. Who’s being what class?

I am, of course, going to be the handsome, proud barbarian. (And in the game!)

Hell wasn’t really hard, you just had to cancel the negative resistances. And yes, the very PVP you described. Duelling was more fun than running… sorry – teleporting down the same corridors again and again and again and again and again and again.

But PvP is mentioned in the video… did you watch the video? There are dedicated PvP arenas. While you won’t be able to gank noobs, you’ll be able to fight opponents who are legitimately interested in fighting back, which frankly seems much more interesting to me.

Always on DRM has some pro and cons. That being said I was soooo pissed in D2 when I realised I couldn’t play my solo character online. So I guess it will fix that simple, common, unspoken yet huge issue.

Obviously this isn’t a serious argument BUT I’M GOING TO MAKE IT ONE ANYWAY

I think RPS gets a pass on this because it’s free. Free excuses a lot. I don’t mind if a game (or website) is online-only if it’s free, because if for some reason I can’t access it I’m no worse off than I would be if it didn’t exist in the first place.

Also, there’s the implication of duplicity on Blizzard’s part – they’re making a traditionally single player or lan franchise (for a large number of players anyway, how many of the shipped copies of D2 ever connected ot battle.net?) online only to increase exposure to the real money auction house they take a rake from. Tut tut.

“Free” makes things a lot easier to tolerate. I spent the past three days happily lost in the Path of Exile public weekend; while it’s also always-on, it doesn’t require me to pay $65 for the privilege.

Mostly, though, it was the bullshit arguments that killed my interest in D3. Having separate characters for SP & MP would apparently have been too confusing for Blizzard’s poor, addled audience…somehow in a way that the exact same requirement for playing across regions isn’t.

D3 is always on for the same reason many mobile games will insist on existent net access before they’ll load: to maximise the chances that someone, somewhere will make a purchase.

You can borrow my brolly. It’s the one that rather improbably says “I’m not that interested in Diablo3, but if I was then I still wouldn’t play it coz of always-online DRM. Also, still boycotting ME3 and AssCreed”

I don’t know if I really understand this… “I won’t get to play this awesome game with my friends because I refuse to buy a game that requires me to be online in order to play with my friends!” So, were you planning on casting some sort of black magic in order to connect your game to your friend’s games?

Though I have no idea when I get to play anyway. The day has gone by without a mail from Amazon that they have shipped my game (yes, I follow the ancient tradition of buying a game in a box – I like boxes).

Hey, I like the boxes – I am buying one, after all. However, doing so has begun to feel a bit old-fashioned, for me at least. Nowadays, only a small fraction of the games I buy come to my home in a box, and even then I often don’t bother with the disc and only enter the Steam key.

It gets worse, a couple of cutscenes have been leaked and they’re just awful. The dialogue sounds like it was taken from a bad fanfic and the music from Disney.
Not to mention all the other TWEESTS that I won’t spoil.

When did Blizzard lose their way? I genuinely enjoy the story and presentation from Starcraft, as barebones as it is. They squeezed every little drop of narrative they could out of their highly constrained options. Diablo just oozes with atmosphere, even moreso than Diablo 2.

Also, the Diablo 1 manual is just ace. Seriously. Everyone who hasn’t read it in 15 years should stop what they’re doing and go read it. The writing isn’t “good” in the classic sense, but it’s fucking ballsy. The entire manual has this feeling of “fuck pop media, screw game ratings, this is a proper game about fighting Satan.” I mean, the background for the Overlords is, itself, about a page long.. and totally messed up.

An excerpt: “The Lord of Hatred took the proud archangel and his followers captive. He bound Inarius with tremendous chains and slowly tore the wings from the back of the angel. Great barbed hooks were then used to stretch out the once glowing skin and his features were distorted by vile powers…. To this day, Inarius is said to be trapped in Hell within a chamber of mirrors, his eyelids torn from his face as he is forced to gaze upon his misshapen form for all eternity. His misguided followers now serve as Hell’s taskmasters, taking the anguish of their lost glory out upon the bodies of others.” That’s about one-third of the whole description. For a monster, not a boss or a major character. For a monster.

By comparison, in Diablo 2, I’m sure the equivalent would be: “Red demon who lives in the desert. Serves Mephisto. Hates lightning.”

In Diablo 3, I’m sure it’d be something like: “Strong but not ranged. Weak to lightning.”

They’re written relatively well – I listened to some of them, they’re written very much from the “storybook” perspective of either Deckard Cain or some other scholar. It’s definitely not as simple as “Strong in melee. Hates lightning.”

They moved from D&D-influenced writing to blockbuster-influenced writing. They were never particularly good at it (or narrative), but they obviously think they are.
Besides those wonderful cutscenes, you could strip most of the storytelling from their games and not miss much. Oh well, it’s relatively easy to ignore, and when it’s as bad as that line I quoted, it’s hilarious.

“Light is figuratively and literally the enemy of darkness.”
That sounds literally like something Chris Traeger would say. Now I imagine a Chris Traeger barbarian-character. That might finally be a reason to buy Diablo 3, come to think of it.

The last couple of WoW expansion launches have been remarkably smooth. Blizzard has definitely gotten better at doing launches since the days of Vanilla WoW. I wouldn’t be that surprised to be able to play almost as soon as the servers go up.

WOE! MY LIFE IS FORFEIT! WHAT PURPOSE WILL I SERVER IN THIS DIABLOLESS WORLD!

RPS complains when release dates are DIFFERENT. This is a global release, that happens to follow timezones so that Gamestop in New York doesn’t have to stay open all night. It’s stupid, but it’s not at all the same thing.

I think it’s generally got its roots in live TV and Business (and probably fed Gov’t as well), and now online a lot of us in the US seem default to the Eastern timezone when talking about things with a mixed crowd, just to simplify things. It’s always been second nature to me and I’ve lived in 2 non-EST timezones.

Eurogamer’s retrospective for Diablo 1 was subtitled “Sympathy for the Devil”, but I wonder if there’s enough of that left (beyond the usual pre-release hype) to make D3 another distinctly conservative success story for BlizzCorp. The “let’s bring back that thing that we did years ago and do a really polished remake” approach just barely worked for Starcraft 2, but that was on the strength of an online-oriented (crazy) fan base with very specific (crazy) interests and a lot of (crazy) dedication. Its co-op features, Auction House silliness and future PvP elements notwithstanding, Diablo 3 doesn’t have the whole eSports (Social) Darwinism to lean on at all. It’s truly going to be interesting to see how the game is received…

Yeah, I don’t think D3 is that conservative at all. It’s still clicking on monsters and loot, but these games are largely defined by the way they interpret the mechanics around the basic interface, and D3 is being quite bold in a number of ways.

I think the analogy is apt at a high level – you’re saying that anything based on random chance could be boiled down to a slot machine simulator. That said, slot machines aren’t truly random – they’re programmed to pay out a jackpot after approximately X number of plays. Although actually, that’s probably closer to what Blizzard’s loot system will do, rather than be truly random.

Interestingly, slot machines are programmed with stricter statistical parameters than just average payout; the variance of the payout has to be strictly controlled too. This is how people can make money off them, they know the distribution the machine must payout at, and if they observe the machine long enough they can tell when the machine will be forced to payout to keep it within its statistical modelling.

Edit: re-read your post. I think this is already the point you were making.

Are you sure slot machines work this way? Is it impossible to draw 9000 times without getting a win that has a 1/1000 chance of happening? If so I would be really intrested in where you got this information, is it just the usual hearsay?

In the UK, yes. I thought all machines were the same, but when I looked for a reference I realised there are two classes. One purely random and one that uses a compensated probability model as I describe above. I believe most machines in the UK adhere to the compensated model. link to gamblingcommission.gov.uk See note 1 for details.

Must as I’d love to join the hype machine at 11pm UK Time, I’m not spending £45 for the priviledge – and going to shops at midnight is a worrisome activity so I’ll just pick-up a copy tomorrow like normal folks do 8)

i buy diablo from the grabbeltisch. meanwhile i play torchlight 2. don’t get me wrong though, both games are great. i think 50-60€ is just a bit too much. i don’t support this cash cow raping. i will eventually buy it when the price drops.

The Witch Doctor has every one of the best abilities in the game. A giant toad that eats things? A totem pole of zombies that tips over onto your enemies? Zombies bears? Even fetishes, the most ridiculous enemy from D2, are now your minions.

It’s really going to be a struggle to stop playing it for laughs and actually min/max once i get past nightmare.

Sorry for a technicality question. Woke up this morning, decided that yes, dammit, that electrical sensation I’m feeling all over is excitement for this game, and it’s time to admit it and I’m going to purchase D3 and I’m going to do it now. So, I did. Bought it off battle.net, downloading and pre-installing, feeling pretty good about it. But there was some screen I saw there that said something about a CD key, and looking over all the info I have, there is no CD key. Also, my computer crashed (as it is wont to do – time for an OS reinstall when I upgrade hardware soon), and now I can’t seem to find the page requesting a CD key any more. Anybody know what the protocol is on this? Googling this invariably returns millions of sites offering to sell me shady CD keys.

Anyone know where the cheapest DD of this game is for sale at? cant justify 45quid on battle.net when its about 33 boxed. However I would like to play it this evening and not go out and have to buy a box tomorrow morning.

not interested in any singapore (photo of the box) codes either. Genuine sites pls